Dark Tales 0: Dark Remembrance
by LA Knight
Summary: Skyler feels the call of six extraordinary girls who are in desperate need of help. One-Shot prequel to Dark Tales.
1. Chapter 1

**Dark Tales**

**Prologue**

**Dark Remembrance**

**.**

**. **

We were friends, the lot of us. Well, I suppose you could say that. We were more like sisters-in-arms, fellow sufferers, prisoners and whores together. Victims together. Princesses in our bricked up, doorless, windowless towers, our glass coffins, our thorn-defended castles. All such nice, poetic names for our prisons. That's what you could say.

The strongest of us, our leader, was Cordelia. Well, that's what she said her name was. We'd whisper sometimes, when the men had fallen asleep. We found out later her name was actually Titania. You know, the Queen of the Fairies in that one play by Shakespeare. She told us, "I'd rather be charming than beautiful." We didn't know what that had to do with anything, but we knew what she meant by it.

She was seventeen.

Then there was the youngest of us. Rosaline and Bianca, twins. Bianca had the silkiest, whitest hair any of us had ever seen. It was like snow, or ice. She had sloe black eyes, and pale skin. But her lips were always red as blood because she bit them until they bled in her sleep. She loved apples, I remember that.

She was comatose the last time I saw her.

And Rosaline... her hair was so red, like fire, like winter embers. Her eyes were golden brown and sleepy, like a bear's. She never bit her lip. She clenched her fists, and her nails were so long she would prick herself, stab herself with them. She was in the same state as her sister when I saw her last.

They were ten.

There was Blanche. She had a funny last name, Cygnet. She told us it meant baby swan. Her hair was blacker than soot, and she never spoke. We weren't sure if she was mute, or stupid, or what. We just couldn't tell. But she had one possession- a stuffed swan toy, wearing a crown. She always wore blue- her favorite color. She never said a word, or cried out, or anything, no matter what the men did. We only knew her name because she got taken to the hospital with the rest of us, and it was written on the tag of her shirt in Sharpie marker. She had two sisters who were in the hospital, also in a coma, from a car wreck: Odette and Ebony. She had four brothers, but they were missing. Blanche told us it was her job to find them and save them. Save them from what, she never said.

Blanche was seventeen as well.

There was Lacy Grey. She talked. She always said her sister Kaye was going to come and save her, like a princess in a fairytale. She had blond hair, like mine, but in two braids. I saw a picture of her sister once- she looked like a boy, in faded jeans and pixie cut, corn-colored hair. Her eyes were what gave her away, all done up in black liner and mascara. It was a mask. Her sister wore a mask, like all of us. She had raised Lacy on the streets of Paris. The only thing Lacy had besides that picture was a charm bracelet. On it was a silver rose and a gold one, a tiny deer, a pair of mittens, a fish, a pair of copper shoes, a strawberry, a snowflake, a hand mirror, an apple, and a goose. She said that each charm meant something, a piece of a story. She wouldn't say which story it was.

She was thirteen.

And Amaranth Vine... Amaranth was strange. She had the longest hair I'd ever seen on anyone. It fell past her waist. It was like living silver. She refused to cut it. She was the best behaved of us all, so she was never forced to. I think the men liked her hair. It hurt her for them to pull it, but she refused to cut it. She said her mother had once been forced to cut her hair, and something terrible had happened, though she wouldn't tell us what and I couldn't think of anything that made sense. She had a brother, Chrys. Her brother had been murdered, she said, by a monster and his monstrous mother. Amaranth always talked about escaping. She always calmed the younger ones by talking about her plans to escape. She would turn herself into a bird and fly away to get help. She'd make a knife out of pieces of ice and cut the throats of our tormenters. She would cut off all her hair- though we knew she never would- and make a rope out of it, and we could all climb out the window. We'd poison the men with fruit full of ground up glass. Always something. It helped. She was the only one of us who wasn't too messed up when we were found.

She was seventeen, too.

There's Pearl Waverly. She's dead. She was technically the youngest, at four, but she died after only a month, so she wasn't really one of us. She couldn't talk either, because they cut out her tongue. They cut up her feet and legs with knives to make her talk, but she never did, not even to make those grunting, moaning noises she made when they left her alone. We did everything we could, but we couldn't stop the bleeding and she died. Pearl had a sea shell necklace, but she gave it to Amaranth. Whenever Amaranth would start to feel it, the sickening of her spirit, she would hold onto that sea shell and pray.

Pearl had three sisters, but we never met them. They were the Waverly Jewels- Pearl, Emerald, Jade, and Sapphire.

I remember too a girl named Alicia Little. She could talk to animals, and she had a photographic memory. She was so quiet, but it seemed as if the hell and horror around us didn't make it through the shell she'd erected around herself. I don't know how she managed to survive what had happened to us - she was only ten - without going mad, but somehow she did it. She made it through. She was the only one of us who went to a home, back to a family. Her brothers, Hayden and Markus, had been looking for her for years, it turned out. She'd been kidnapped at age five to be a slave for the men my so-called "father" associated with. She got to go home. We stayed behind.

There were so many of us. We were like some obscene, hellish brothel of babies. There was Melody, Candy, Wendy, Morae, Danielle, Aisling, Cassie... so many of us. What happened to us all? I don't even know where they are anymore. I've lost them all. I've lost them all. My friends, my comrades.

And then there's me. But you all know me. Skyler Rose Daratrazanoff. Gabriel and Francesca's daughter. Lifemate- supposedly- to Dimitri. Descendant of Rhiannon Dragonseeker. 2/3 Carpathian, 1/3 Human.

I remember these girls. Without them. I would have been dead before anyone came to help me. But now... now I feel them, calling me. They need help. And I feel souls bound up with theirs, dark and dangerous, but oh so lonely. Carpathian males, like Gabriel and Lucian. Like Dimitri. Someone has to find my old companions, or several new vampires are going to pop into existence.

Which means I need to talk to my father and my uncle. And I need to talk to my lifemate. Because I'm going to need all the help I can get.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Dark Tales: Author's Note_**

.

.

_At the end of the multiple warnings is the point of this update._

.

.

.

.

**_WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS._**

.

.

**_WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS._**

.

.

.

**_WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS._**

.

.

.

.

**_WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS._**

.

.

.

**Dark Tales: Remembrance** is a one-shot prequel to my Dark Tales Series, which follows the lives of:

- Samantha and Sabrina Dubrinsky (our favorite unborn nameless twins)

- Blanche and her two sisters Odette and Ebony.

- The twins Rosaline and Bianca.

- Our Skyler Daratrazanoff

- Lacy Grey and her androgynous sister Kaye.

- The beautiful Amaranth.

- The seemingly deceased Pearl Waverly and her brother Shellton, and her older sisters, Jade, Sapphire, and Emerald.

- Their leader, Cordelia.

- Jasmine and Solange

- Ginny Jansen

- Gabrielle Sanders

- Ivory Malinov (Christine Feehan wrote in an email to me that Ivory may not be dead)

- Jennifer Wentworth (our favorite baby)

- Tamara Daratrazanoff (our favorite toddler)

- Branislava and Tatijana Dragonseeker

.

- It also follows the trials of the Carpathian males Tiberiu Bercovitz (mentioned in _Dark Celebration_), and his brothers Rajmund and Sebastian Bercovitz (OMC).

- Our favorite canon male, Dimitri.

- Tariq Asenguard (mentioned in _Dark Curse_)

- Andre (mentioned in _Dark Curse_)

- Stefano (OMC), David (OMC), and Dominic Dragonseeker.

- Marius Valentin (OMC).

- Luiz, the Jaguar male who was converted in _Dark Possession._

- Zacarias de la Cruz.

- Kristoff Malinov, youngest of the notorious Malinov Brothers... the only one yet to turn (OMC-canon mix).

.

.

**Stories in this series are:**

Dark Remembrance **(complete)**  
Dark Dance **(in-progress)**  
Dark Forest **(coming soon)**  
Dark Ice**(coming soon)**  
Dark Needle**(coming soon)**  
Dark Ocean**(coming soon)**  
Dark Madness**(coming soon)**  
Dark Grace**(coming soon)**  
Dark Spell**(coming soon)**  
Dark Tower**(coming soon)**  
Dark Passion**(coming soon)**  
Dark Visions**(coming soon)**  
Dark Transformation**(coming soon)**  
Dark Glass**(coming soon)**  
Dark Revenge**(coming soon)**  
Dark Jungle**(coming soon)**  
Dark Maelstrom**(coming soon)**  
Dark Princess**(coming soon)**  
Dark Moon**(coming soon)**  
Dark Water**(coming soon)**  
Dark Storm**(coming soon)**  
Dark Sea **(coming soon)**  
Dark Snow **(coming soon)**  
Dark Solstice**(coming soon)**  
Dark Wings**(coming soon)**  
Dark Promise**(coming soon)**  
Dark Time **(coming soon)**  
Dark Song**(coming soon)**  
Dark Charm**(coming soon)**


End file.
